| : Another newbie type question. What type of surfaces do you find best for vert ramps? Concrete, wood or metal.
It depends. Concrete gives you very stiff ramps but is also very unforgiving when you fall. Slams can be very nasty on concrete. Wood is more forgiving and a metal covering on a wood ramp is somewhere in between. A pure metal ramp (the only one I know is the Karlsruhe) is more like concrete in this respect.
There are, however, at least two other traits to consider: Grip and Durability. With respect to grip, we would be building only wood ramps. However, in humid climates an outdoor woodramp last only for one or two seasons till it is rotten. So we have wood indoors and metal covering outdoors. In places where it is very humid (like Brasil) they build only concrete ramps. But a metal surface can be made less slippery by painting it.
> The 8 foot ramp in my town (the only ramp we have) is a metal one. I find it a little slippery so I use 78A wheels to compensate a bit.
The problem is less of an issue to roller skaters than to skateboarders. On roller skates you can avoid carving most of the time so there is less of a problem with slipping.
Bernhard
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